Principles and Theories of Language Acquisition and Learning

(Eng Ed 113)

Name: Date: 09-27-2021

Partner: Course: 1BSE-A

I. Activity 1. Please answer the following questions. Discuss it with one of your classmates
through Text or FB Messenger. Make a narrative of your answer.

1. How do children learn to produce the sounds of their language?

- Children use the language they hear from adults to learn about how sounds work.
They then begin to imitate sounds and words, laying the groundwork for verbal
communication. Children learn language through interaction with other children as
well as their parents and other adults. Every typical child who grows up in a
normal environment, surrounded by conversation, will acquire the language that is
being used around them. Traditionally, language was seen as an innate human
ability. A child who was not taught to speak as an infant would eventually develop
language or be able to catch-up once taught. In the early months of life, children
already begin to recognise the distinct sounds of the language they are hearing,
and show preferences towards those languages.  This is because of a powerful
process in children’s brains that happens just by listening to lots of language. First
children have to learn to distinguish speech sounds from other noises so that they
know which sounds to pay attention to. So they need to distinguish, for example,
between human speech and birdsong and between human speech and other
human sounds such as whistling or humming. Then, once they have learnt to
recognise these speech sounds, they have to learn to produce them by
manipulating the passage of air through their vocal tract and mouth using precise
sequences of lips, tongue and vocal cord movements. Children start to produce
 speech sounds themselves at different ages. However, typically developing
children usually follow a similar sequence when developing consonant sounds.
Children learn through interactions with more knowledgeable others.

2. How do they learn to associate words with meaning?

- Words are learned by children using advanced cognitive abilities that were
developed for various purposes. The ability to infer others' intentions, the
ability to acquire concepts, an understanding of grammatical structure,
and certain general learning and memory abilities are among them.
Children have to learn how to combine speech sounds into meaningful
words. Once children have discovered the meaning of words, they need to
work out how words fit together into sentences. They have to learn that
changes in meaning may be signalled by sequencing words in different
ways: man bites dog is newsworthy, dog bites man is not. Finally, children
have to learn to string their thoughts together in a coherent way in order to
hold a conversation and to respond appropriately to the sentences of
others. The traditional common-sense belief is that a child learns a word
by associating the word with a visible object. So the mother points to a dog
and says Look! Doggie! The child associates the word with the object itself.
Parents who use more words and who use a greater variety of different
words tend to have children whose vocabulary develops more quickly.

3. How do they acquire the rules of grammar?

- Learning grammatical rules begins at the pre-operational stage of a child's
cognitive development, where the child develops the ability to have symbolic
thoughts that includes drawing, writing, and spelling. At the age of 2-6, a child
learns his first language, including grammar. At first, he will pick up words from his
parents. He then uses these words to create sentences which is the rule of syntax.
But if you notice, a child would say "away ako" instead of "Inaway nya ako."
Children learn grammatical rules by mere utterances they hear and create their
 own set of rules and apply to their words which they never heard before. Children
at this stage absorb too many grammatically correct sentences but never utter
them back. This is because most parents do not correct their children, as they have
a mentality of "bata pa bitaw." Instead of lecturing, a response from a child,
whether it's right or wrong, is usually praised by the parents, sometimes laughs
about it.

4. Why do children differ in the speed of their language acquisition?

- A child's ability to receive a language differs from the other. Many factors explain
how a child acquires language. First, both nature and nurture contribute to
language acquisition. Where in nature 'a child who’s not taught to speak as an
infant would be able to catch up once taught.' While in nurture, 'language is a
product of upbringing and environment.' Second, the human brain, without this
human knowledge, would not be possible. Third, the environment to which a
learner is exposed. If a child fails to have these, then it will affect the speed of his
language acquisition. Exposure to a language is critical to language development.
This means that if a child is isolated his entire life without practicing the dialect, he
will develop a language delay. Learning without follow-ups is nothing but a waste.
Also, children with disabilities tend to learn slower than others.
Proofs of discussion with the partner.